Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/460

 452 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July that it was saved is perhaps due to the influence of that great collector, John Selden. A little later it received its last important accession when Charles II purchased a library of great interest which in its character and formation is remarkably like that of Lord Lumley. This was the Theyer collection. John Theyer, who was born towards the end of the reign of Queen Eliza- beth, was not only a collector but a diligent student of manuscripts. In his country house near Gloucester he set himself to amass all the relics of monastic libraries that he could secure. It may cause surprise that these books were still in the market towards the middle of the seventeenth century, but in fact Theyer accumulated more than three hundred manu- scripts, most of which had belonged to about a score of religious houses. What had happened to them in the time since the dissolution we cannot tell. Some Theyer obtained from Gloucestershire neighbours, at Minchin- hampton, Painswick, Meysey Hampton, and other places ; * others were got from Worcester, Hereford, London, and further afield ; but the history of the means by which he formed his library still awaits investigation. Its size has been inaccurately stated. Anthony Wood spoke of ' 800 antient manuscripts or more '. 2 But when Theyer died in 1673 and his grandson, Charles Theyer, desired to sell the books to the university of Oxford, Edward Bernard was employed to ' view ' its contents 3 and made an inventory. This is still preserved in his own handwriting and has been lately transferred from the university archives to the Bodleian Library. In it Bernard gives a brief description of 312 manuscripts and adds a note that there were some others of less value. Now a list drawn up about 1678 after the collection had passed to London enumerates 336 manuscripts, a total which is evidently consistent with Bernard's inventory. But unluckily, when Bernard printed his great catalogue of English manuscripts in 1697, he repeated his old list omitting the note at the end. This misled a writer in the Dictionary of National Biography into the statement that by that date the collection ' had dwindled to 312 '. All but about a dozen of the 336 can still be identified in the royal library. There can be little doubt that St. James's Palace had come to be the place of deposit of by far the greater part of the manuscripts. What remained at Whitehall seem to have been mainly show-books. But no catalogue of this is preserved, and we can only conjecture that the books perished in the fires of 1691 and 1698. When, not many years later, the St. James's library was removed to Cotton House, adjoining the palace of Westminster, and then to Ashburnham House in Little Dean's Yard, it also was in danger of destruction ; but happily the fire of 1731, which wrought havoc on the Cottonian library, did little direct damage to the king's books, though many of them suffered in the process of rescue. The two libraries, after finding temporary quarters in the buildings of Westminster School and the Abbey, were finally stored in Montague House. 1 ' Mr. Higford ' in 4 B. xi is no doubt William Higford, not unknown as an author, whose name may still be seen cut in the door-post of his manor house of Dixton in Alderton. Life, ed. A. Clark, ii. 268.
 * Ibid. iv. 74.